Hard Questions

I really have very little experience with death. Several of my grandparents have died, but (unfortunately for me) I wasn't as close to them as I would have liked to be, and so when they passed it seemed distant, disconnected from me.

Over the last week I learned about a woman, a wife and mother whom I've met briefly, whom I've seen many times, who had contracted a very sudden illness. She wasn't old and feeble. The illness wasn't cancer or any other disease that I hear people dying of on any regular basis. And yet, yesterday, I heard that this woman died, leaving a husband and young children.

Having experienced so little death in my life, I found that I was really surprised by this. Shocked. I mean, after all, old people die. People with long-term illnesses die. Cancer patients sometimes do. But middle-aged folks? And suddenly? Its not supposed to happen like that, is it?

And very bluntly, how does a Dad explain to his young children that mommy isn't coming home?

There are other questions that come to mind, but I can't stay in that vein. The tightness in my throat won't let me. May God forbid that I ever have to deal with those questions first-hand.

Meanwhile, what I will do is allow events like this to shift my perspective from the 'urgent' to the 'important'. I took extra pleasure in the time I had with my wife and children last night. And I lifted a prayer for the people I know, the people close to me, who don't know Jesus.

May he continue to draw men and women to himself. And may he soothe the broken-hearted.
B